Understanding the “Harvesting of Souls” from the teachings in the Sanskrit texts

The archaic phrase “harvesting of souls” is in fact specious, wrong and misleading. There is only the One. There is only one Soul. We all share the same Soul, the Oneness.

“I am the same in all beings.” (Bhagavad Gita IX.29)

What appears to transmigrate, to move from one material body to another, is a portion of consciousness in the form of the subtle body. Psychics or Seers can easily see this body and read its condition.

The word “harvesting” is also misleading. No one can ‘take’ you or make you do anything unless you yourself have generated a consciousness that resonates with a particular force, a waveform that would then magnetize you into its similar frequency.

Therefore a deeper understanding of the mechanics of this process will relieve you of fear and help you to realize why it is imperative to generate a high consciousness at every moment.

The Subtle Body

As you incarnate in Time and Space, you build a subtle body. Some term it the spirit or astral body. In Kashmir Shaivism is it called the puryashtaka rupa (Sanskrit). Like the physical body, the subtle body contains a complex nervous system.

These “nerve currents are called Hita Nadis (Sanskrit) and they are very fine in structure, finer than even the thousandth part of a hair. Through these very fine, subtle nerve currents pass the serum of the essence of the human individual…” (Krishnananda, Brihadaranyaka Upanishad).

These subtle nerves store the impressions of your lives and your thoughts. Every thought, every experience is stored in this the subtle body that carries your individual consciousness from one life to another. This individuality is only apparent, for beneath the appearance of Multiplicity is the Real - the One.

It is this aggregate, this cumulative consciousness that determines your next incarnation. You inevitably become your own self-created, self-generated consciousness. You are drawn to the external holographic manifestations of your own thoughts. There is no one to blame. It is all your doing. You are a portion of the Oneness playing in Time and Space, like everyone else.

The eternal, imperishable, immutable Oneness takes the ‘appearance’ of a fragment of Its Self as the individual soul. When you move into a new physical body and when you leave, meaning die, you do so in this subtle body. Your current data-collecting vehicle, your subtle body, carries the five senses and the mind, the impressions (samskaras) of your experiences as “the wind carries scents.” (Bhagavad Gita XV.7 & 8)

Like attracts like!

From an understanding of the subtle body, we realize that no one can ever actually ‘take’ or harvest our soul. What will happen is that our subtle body, which has been built by our own consciousness, will be magnetized to where and what it resonates with. Like attracts like – that simple!

Location is determined by your consciousness

Consciousness determines everything. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says that the god worshippers go to the gods, the god worlds; those who worship the ancestors go to them, the ancestral realms; those who sacrifice to the spirits go to the spirits (bhutani), the shaman worlds; and those who Know and Become the One merge into That. (BhG IX.25)

There is nothing wrong in any of these forms of worship. However, these approaches are only “partial manifestations of the highest reality.” (Abhinavagupta, Bhagavad Gita VII 21-23)

The Invisible Realms

In previous Cycles of Time, we were not limited to the five senses and we were aware of these realms now invisible to most of us.  We may have played in these realms before and we may have bonds with them. However it is up to you to decide what you want and where you want to arrive.

Why do you need them?

The so-called extra-terrestrials are merely the inhabitants of the Myriad Realms. They may have grand technologies and may be very pretty, but are they enlightened? If they were enlightened would they be in these phantasmal realms? If they are not enlightened, if they do not have the understanding of the One, if their consciousness has not reached eternal Wisdom, if they have not Become the One – then why do you need them? Ignore them!

You would not walk up to any stranger on the street and give your life over to them, would you? Why trust these myriad spirit guides, ETs, etc. when you have no idea who or what they are? Ask yourself what does “saving” you mean. Exactly where will they take you?

Tat Twam Asi

Only the God-within you will lead you Home. You are perfectly capable of saving yourself. God resides within you and waits patiently, eternally.

The quotation from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad at the top of this website says it very clearly. These myriad realm beings in all their phantasmal hierarchies do not want you to know that you are the very Soul permeating this entire universe. You are that Oneness. You are That. As they say in Sanskrit, Tat Twam Asi  - That thou art!!

***

The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, Swami Krishnananda; The Divine Life Society, Uttaranchal, Himalayas, India, 2006.

Abhinavagupta’s Commentary on the Bhagavad Gita

GITARTHA SAMGRAHA

Translated from Sanskrit with Introduction & Notes by Boris Marjanovic

Indica Books; 2004, Varanasi India

The Bhagavad Gita

Translated by Winthrop Sargeant

State University of New York Press, 1994

Related article:

Who the ETs are & What is up there on our Moon?

http://www.metaphysicalmusing.com/articles/k-moon.htm